it's the popular theory
by the sun in splendor
Summary: they twist around her, their thoughts becoming one with her own small semblance of consciousness. river-centric.
1. the engineer

She dances around Kaylee, simplifying phrases that take her addled brain hours to concoct. She is not crazy.

_River is not crazy._

She just has trouble wrapping her head around things-

So she goes to Kaylee, who is kind and organic and who speaks in terms she understands. She slips into the mechanic's mind and finds herself to be in the ship

(part of the ship); she knows it's her rightful place, crawling among wires and engines. She speaks the language of _Serenity_, knows its creaks and hums.

And, after all, River does feel a sort of vague responsibility for her. Somewhere in her body (perhaps in a finger or toe, somewhere small and easy to push away) she knows that her name is connected with the neatly patched scar on Kaylee's belly.

The first time they play jacks, she lets the mechanic win.


	2. the hero of canton

_public relations: they're both rather difficult people. _

* * *

><p>No one says it, but everyone knows it wasn't Jayne, as much of a pain as he can be-<p>

(River recognizes the facial expressions of the crew as they interact with him. It takes months for her to learn to discern annoyance from fear. Both are present.)

-it was that _blue sun_; hands of blue two by two hands of blue two by-

no.

No. She knows better than to start that litany. Once she's in it she can't get out, no matter how she struggles to push it to the back of her mind. There's no _back_ to her mind anymore. Everything is front and center, stark and present and she can't escape.

She sees the _blue sun_ and the knife in her hand shimmers between _tool_ and _weapon_. She settles on _weapon_ and a line of red opens across his chest.

The way his forehead furrows, the dampness of his eyes a moment after the act- she reads them as sadness, at first. Later she learns the signs of fear, and doesn't understand.

When those fleeting moments of clarity come

(which is not often)

she knows Jayne recognizes the truth of her words. She doesn't just know things, she _feels _things and understands their truth. She feels his guilt, processes it, and accepts it, for the moment.


	3. this is war

_tilting dipoles_

* * *

><p>Zoe is harder to read than the others.<p>

She can hear it in their quiet conversations – Zoe and the captain

(old war buddies- what does that mean, really? words like this are loaded; words like this mean so much more than they seem to)

and their inability to forget the bygone skirmishes that left them both with scars and a tendency to freeze (facial expression and all) when scared and duck (_bomb bomb it's a bomb_ scream their minds) when Kaylee connects the wrong wire (it only happened once; it will never happen again) and the engine backfires.

She holds her thoughts to herself. River is tantalized by their inaccessibility, the poise of the girl who is so good with guns-

but she's not really a girl, is she? Zoe's a woman, strong and whole, the way she wants to be when she stops being broken. _Sane_.

They avoid contact (they both have poles pointing _north_, they repel because that's what happens when they-)

When they meet for the first time, Zoe doesn't trust her. When she jumps the barrier towards the reavers to take back all the times she'd been protected by the crew, she is able to finally (_finally!_) catch a small view of Zoe's thoughts:

_Wash. Need Wash. WashSimonRiver can't lose them too-_

When they meet for the last time, years and years later (and she's almost whole then, almost. She thinks she might never be perfect), Zoe 's face is guarded, but River can feel that the wall has finally come down.


	4. our father

His bible is a _problem._

It doesn't make sense at all, violates every rule she ever learned (also some that she made up on her own). She doesn't like it. She doesn't like the bone-thin pages;

she doesn't understand why they couldn't be more substantial. Her lack of understanding (and she is River, it is unusual for her to not understand, even _now_, even _after-_) forces discomfort under her skin.

Her calculating mind will not allow such frivolous things as religion.

But the shepherd's gentle persuasion keeps the discomfort there. It seeps through the cracks in her mind, infiltrating like vines.

She wants it out.

Noah's ark is an anomaly, _early quantum state phenomena_, these things are not real, not tangible like math and dance and the easy step of one foot after the other.

His hair, though-

the hair is real.

The hair is also a _problem._is


	5. she will never be their 贱女人

_jei jei: big sister_

* * *

><p>Everyone has a different name for Inara. For Kaylee, it's a bubbly <em>jei jei<em>. For the captain, the word _whore,_ hushed and rushed, slips off his teeth.

She never calls Inara anything, usually never even calls her by name, because _Inara _is the closest word she has to _mother_ and she's afraid that if she uses it too many times all the feelings it brings will be gone.

Inara is the eternal overseer, when brothers and captains and crew are away doing dangerous things. There's a rhythm to it. The captain and Zoe propose a plan, which is immediately shot down by Simon and Jayne, though for opposing reasons. The shepherd unites the group with that _book_ (its vines are still in her head like the mold that grew once in her mother's freezer on Osiris but when she remembers that her stomach turns-

apple bits)

and then everyone goes and throws themselves into gun-cleaning and mission-planning. The buzz of their worry makes her head spin.

When she thinks of _Inara _she must also think of the captain, and the way their words burn each other. She catches a glimpse of a blurry future (or a past, or a time that will never come to be) in which _Inara_'s head rests on the captain's shoulder and their words have lost the bite that fills the air of the cabin with electricity.


	6. the pilot

Wash easily takes her in, shows her the controls of the ship and how they glide-

(_and how they glide! _like little jewels in the interface; she reaches to touch them and is met with a tingling in her fingertips.

static electricity. the dryness of space is no stranger to her.)

She takes to the ship like a fish to water (she doesn't like this phrase. fish are dirty. they swim in polluted oceans. perhaps she takes to the ship like a book to its shelf, like a fork to its drawer). She knows she is at home in the cockpit.

He elegantly accepts her obsession with the Black. The first time she wanders into the cockpit, she's never seen so many stars in her life. She glares up at them, suspicious.

"You alright?"

She doesn't answer at first, then-

"Balls of plasma catalogued into celestial spheres. Carbon-based, like you." (and the unspoken _and like me_).

"Sorry, I don't speak Intelligent. You mean stars."

She stares, neck cranked back so far she'll be uncomfortable for weeks. "Like jewels."

Wash doesn't ask her anything after that. But he can tell when she's having a rough day

(_rough! like he understands_, she thinks. _rough like nerves not matching up with the right fingertips and spilling coffee on myself, rough like needles prodding me like I'm a gorram cow. rough like my synapses don't fire at the same speed as yours. i'm either light years ahead or behind. it's hard to tell)_

because she bursts in next to him and sits cross-legged on the floor, staring up through the porthole like she'll never see stars again.


	7. o captain

__Laopengyou, ni kan qilai hen you jingshen: __You're looking wonderful, old friend.

* * *

><p><em>Girl's not normal, no two ways about it. <em>

The words almost hurt, the first time they wash over her. They slip into her mind and, for once, she believes them. It's not that she hasn't known it for awhile (it's been hard to ignore the nightmares, the twitches of _future -_memory that pass through her like electric shocks. She knows they will be close someday (almost as close as Simon,

_close like hands and feet),_

but for now his mental words put her in pain.

Later, after what feels like a thousand years, she understands some things.

-on seeing him wake up after being shot: after everyone goes their separate ways, and even though she tries to rationalize leaving him on the ship it doesn't really work. _"__Laopengyou, ni kan qilai hen you jingshen." _

-on watching Zoe and the captain, Wash and the captain, Wash and Zoe: the captain is the only one on the ship who knows pain as well as she does. For her it comes in colors and flavors (she knows the word is _synesthesia_, and can almost touch the idea that not everyone has this sense). For him it comes in waves, pushing over him and against him no matter how hard he tries to resist.

She watches his loathing and confusion turn to quiet respect, and slowly turns into Serenity's second captain.


	8. they come when you call

She depends on her brother for more than she can say.

Because, you see, she remembers things,

(_the look of a smaller brother, one still admittedly more ignorant than his baby sister. his face is open and smiling, radiating sunshine against his family, where they sit around him. he plays a game on the rug, on his computer, where he must choose the number of sutures with which to close a wound. this is not a game for children, but it's already too childish for him._

_river outgrew it three years ago._)

and understands that the things she cannot change,

(_'i love you, river.' simon's voice breaks on her name. she hears it through the drugs that muffle her thoughts and heart rate, through the heavy clasp that seals her in the stasis chamber. she cannot open her mouth to answer back, but her eyes flicker under their lids. she knows the truth of what he says, the connection of siblings that isn't broken by time or distance. despite the anguish of the last few years, she never lost hope. he came to her, to help her._

_she loves him too, even though she can't say it. many months will pass before she will be able to form those words._)

and refuses to give up when she knows she can make a difference.

(_'miranda- ask her… i'm alright… i just like to hear you say it…' she is a crack shot with a laser gun, pistol, bow and arrow; anything on board is fair game as a weapon. the crew never forgets the time she takes out one of badger's men with a spare kickball. she is more than good with weapons, she _is _one. but she is more than that. as they recover from miranda, from the reavers, from wash, the crew begins to untangle her from her position as simon's baggage and manages to uncover a young woman, sure of herself, with a quiet smile.)_

Simon is the reason she has survived all these years. She wouldn't have made it without him. As her mind repairs itself, he gains a sister, sure. But she gains a brother she had forgotten how to know, after the Academy years.

He is the last piece to her cracked mind, and he fits in neatly once she finds his place, joining in with the other people-puzzle-pieces.

She is healing.


End file.
